Ask yourself, do you want to get your book distributed into bookstores and are not concerned about income/money from the books (i.e. you will be receiving income from people who hire you after reading the book)? or do you want to make money from the books and are less concerned about the bookstore distribution?

Are you willing to put a great deal of time into marketing the book? If you are not, then either don't write it, or get a publicist: anyone can write a book, but if it's not going to be purchased, it doesn't matter what you write.

Publishing Choices

Publishing House:

The main reason to choose a publishing house is their distribution network. Having your book published by a publishing house is the easiest way to get your book onto the shelves of bookstores. They will also do all of the editorial work: create a jacket and layout design, get the book proofed, edited, and indexed, provide you with an ISBN number, distribute the book world-wide to their partners, and do some marketing.

Here are the downsides:

you need a literary agent. There is no way around this: publishing houses rarely notice books brought in ‘over the transom’ as they say.

you must write a proposal.

the time between getting an agent, finding a publisher to take the book, finishing writing/rewriting the book, going through the editorial process (editors, designers, proofers) and getting the book onto the publishing calendar is anywhere from 1-2 years.

you still have to do the major share of the marketing yourself. They never, ever, do all that they say they will do.

you will get 10% of what they sell the book for. So if they sell it to a publisher’s clearing house for, say, $4 (even if the cover price is $25), you get $.40. I calculated that I received an average of $.85 per hardback, and about $1.50 per paperback.

you have very little control over the editing process, the jacket design, the layout design. They tell you otherwise, but their idea of marketing and yours are most likely two different things.

Print On Demand/Self Publishing:

When choosing to do POD, there are obvious upsides: you get to make all of the choices to get the exact book you want, in a time frame that suits you; you don’t need an agent; you get to keep approximately 35 – 50% of the published price of the book, and you can have total editorial control – not to mention get the book published on line, and available for order in major bookstores.

Here are the downsides:

the book will most likely not be sold on the shelves of a bookstore.

you will bear the costs of all editing, proofing, layout and jacket design, printing, and indexing. This will run about $7000. Some POD houses will do this for a fee. And you must find the resources and organize these tasks.

you must get your own ISBN number.

you still have to do the marketing.

you are responsible for finding and supervising all distribution channels.

Ebook/Self Publishing:

Ebooks are simple to create and quick to publish. You can write and publish them in Word, or get a layout designer and do them professionally and put onto a PDF file. You can have a friend do a cover design for you, or get a professional jacket designer, or not have a cover at all. You get to keep 100% of the price of the book minus any overhead. You will be able to email the book to friends or clients, or print them up to throw into your bag for a client visit. It's also possible to get a printing house to do POD copies for you to have, or send out. This is really the easiest, quickest book publishing model.

The downsides:

1–9. People will steal your book. They will buy one copy and give it to 100 friends or colleagues who will give it to another 100 people. You will not get paid for it. An on-line ‘free’ book group will steal it and sell it or give it away. It will be totally out of your control unless you pay a large sum to get special software to encode it.
10. you will bear the costs of any editing, proofing, layout/jacket design, printing and indexing.
11. you still have to do marketing.
12. you are responsible for all distribution channels.
13. you will have to have a payment mechanism set up, and a site for people to go to for purchasing.

Home Fulfillment/Self Publishing

If you decide to write and print a book and get it shipped to your home to sell it, you are officially a publishing house. People will order the book from a website you’ll create, and then you’ll fulfill the order by bringing books to the post office. You will keep all of the proceeds of the sale minus the overhead.

The downsides:

you’ll need to do all of the marketing.

you’ll need to pay for printing, shipping, and storing the book.

you will need to pay for jacket/layout design, editing, proofing, indexing and printing. Some print houses will do this for a fee.

you will have to set up a payment mechanism, take and manage the deposits and books lost.

Ghost Writer/Self Publishing or Publishing House

If you don’t want to write the book yourself, there are many professionals who will do this for you. They will write the whole thing or just the proposal; they will get it edited and proofed – or any combination of tasks that the two of you decide on. They may know literary agents and jacket designers. But it all comes at a cost.

The downsides:

depending on what you want this person to do, the costs can range from $5,000 - $15,000 for writing a proposal for you, to 6 or 7 figures to write a whole book for you.

you still have to do the marketing.

you will have to do whatever is outside of the contract with your writer.

you will have to manage the relationship very very carefully or you will not get the book you want to write.